this legislation. i think it's very important. i renovated half a dozen small buildings in san francisco over the last 30 years and that's something that i have always done. i would like to tell you a little bit of the realities having done major retrofit on a building. i was aware that in march of 2010. the board of supervisors unanimously passed legislation to get owners to voluntary retrofit and strengthen soft story buildings which was what i i had and they would wave buildings fees and expedited permits. in may of 2011 i went with my engineer to submit plans to retrofit a building and i had the plan checker from hell who had no idea of what we

were trying to do, got no fee reductions, after a year of going back and forth it finally passed and went to the bureau of street use and mapping which looked at google earth and came up with a bunch of things that had nothing to do with working with this building. that took another couple months. by the time i finally got the permit in october. it's downpours and as we show we have a series of earthquakes and finally got done about 6 months later. looks great, needed to be done and i looked at my tax bill a couple months ago and i wasn't supposed to have my taxes raise today do this. it went up a

lot. >> thank you. i will be asking about dbi and make sure we are being coordinated on this. next speaker. >> mr. chairman, representative of the committee, i'm with the association of realtors. we support the ordinance and in particular we have been very pleased with the progress we have been making with the city staff and sponsors and authors of this legislation for one amendment that we have requested and that is to require disclosure at the time of sale. we have crafted the amendments submitted them to mr. leaney and he's committed to work with us and craft that legislation and insert it in the appropriate time as soon as possible. this will help facilitate the intent and direction of the ordinance as well as a shorter greater

compliance at the time of sales. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. would that be trailing legislation? no. great. thank you, next speaker. >> good afternoon, my name is george -- i'm a native san san francisco, it's the kind of thing that makes me proud to be a san franciscans. we have seen what has happened when people are not prepared for a disaster. i applaud that you are creating a clear policy that will help us make the mistakes that have been happening in the past. >> other do i do not have any more cards. please lineup if you have any questions. >> my name is jeremy paul. i'm

here as both -- renter. it has a large position of a resident control and mostly rent control mostly unstable or unsafe housing. these properties are also economically unstable. i want to speak very strongly in support of this ordinance in the pass through as it's constructed. it's important to main tain this housing. i foresee an --ellis act bonanza

for people that cannot maintain these buildings if they can not pass it through as it is. frankly the increase in value to the property owner, i think is negligently considering how much money was made by property owners who were able to demolish their properties after loma prieta. nobody thinks it's a benefit to tear down a building. so a lot of this housing is not being maintained in the way it needs to be maintained to preserve the rent controlled housing resources in the oldest buildings in san francisco. please observe the pass through as constructed.

>> thank you very much. >> supervisors, my name is michael hammond. i'm here on behalf of the national association and remodeling industry. we saw with our own eyes firsthand the value of this kind of retrofitting in loma prieta. working on the damaged buildings after the earthquake and those buildings that had modest amounts of strengthening performed so much better. the investment value of this kind of legislation for the property owners is enormous. i don't think much has been made for the value to the occupants of these buildings of not being displaced. when you go to other places that have had tragedy keys like in new orleans after katrina or other countries that

have had earthquakes, the lives of the displaced people is truly miserable. to force thousands of people to be forced to live in temporary housing in tents, to be able to avoid that outcome is an enormous benefit, benefit not only to them, but to everybody because it facilitates the rebuilding the city, facilitates getting back to normal. it would be irresponsible not to pass this legislation. we know the earthquake is coming and the damage it will do and the displacement will be huge. urge you to please pass this legislation. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. next speaker. >> good afternoon supervisors. i'm sar is a short with the housing rights committee of san

francisco. we also applaud this legislation and believe that it's very beneficial for the city at large including the renters in terms of preventing displacement of tenants and rent control housing. we also have some concerns the cost to the pass throughs to the tenants in the form of rent increases. unfortunately for some residents this could be as much as $80-100 a month and with limited incomes in this economy that is way too expensive for some to be able to afford and believe it will cause displacement for people trying to do something for the very opposite that is trying to prevent a displacement. it seems only fair that rather to

allow for a hundred percent of for these retrofit i am improvements to pass through these renters we look at the line of 50 percent split and actually truth be told, we believe what the property i am improvements that the owners are getting the fact that they can write this off on their taxers they are also preserving their property and as you heard one of the owners today speak of their possibilities for renting the apartment for a higher value and in fact it makes more sense that tents tenants should have no cost to bear in this, however we understand the benefits, renters and the cost being somewhat limited if we did a 50 percent pass through where we shared cost. we do think that is fair and we are willing to support that.

>> thank you. >> mr. goal son. >> ted goal son. i want to reiterate what sally said. most capital i am improvements in the rent ordinance do get a 5050 pass through. however for code work for seismic is a hundred percent pass through. it seems only fair that for this particular program which will result in some pretty hefty rent increases for people that can barely pay today. i think it's fair. landlords get the increase in the value of their buildings and they get the tax write offs. in addition

we should look at how to make it more automatic. right now tenants who get assistance have a tough time. we would like to see that be more automatic and we have a concern with eviction. many tenants are evicted supposedly temporarily for capital improvement but never come back to their apartment and it's higher rent which turned into a condo. people that say there will be no eviction because of this type of work, if they include that in the ordinance that tenants cannot be evicted for seismic retrofit work. thank you. >> thank you, next speaker.

>> good afternoon, supervisors, with the department association. i'm here to support the seismic retrofit legislation and remind this body that this is a hearing on the retrofit legislation and not a hearing on the rent ordinance, but to offer a historical perspective on the pass through issue which seems to be a hot button today. one of the more liberal historically liberal members of this body supervisor former supervisor and current assembly member tom, was actually the person that created the hundred percent pass through on seismic mandatory legislation. it took us about two years to craft that hundred percent seismic pass through together as a group with all the tenant that was were here today, all the property owners and supervisor signed off on that because he felt this seismic retrofit work

was that important to preserve our rent control housing stock. thank you very much, supervisors. >> thank you. next speaker. >> good afternoon, supervisors, this is very important legislation, thank you for working on it together. a couple of thoughts. i'm sympathetic to the situation of lower income residents but lower income building owners also need some attention. so some combination, if you are going to think of a less than a hundred percent, then do in some kind of income qualification. renters come in all income brackets and if you are going to make a policy to make one lower, let's make it to fit them. perhaps something you can also consider if there would be some kind of tax abatement for the construction.

but, the biggest thing that i'm concerned about is fire. and we can retrofit every 5 union plus building in san francisco and the next building might be a single family home and the water heater falls over and everything burns anyway. i'men encouraging you to look at everything. >> good afternoon supervisors, i'm the owner of property management systems. we are a property management company we've done some modeling around the numbers regarding whether or not individuals would be displaced and we haven't really found a place where they would be. should the numbers reach the 75 levels, there is a hard

ship process in place. we have found that not only in one instance the tenant did not get a hard ship fchl they are needy in that facet they will be granted a hard ship assistance in that situation. >> i'm president of metro construction. i have listened to everybody here today and thought it's really mazeing the amount of support that everybody has here. i didn't know what the public response was to but i'm glad to see it. what i didn't hear is that we actually did a 40-unit apartment building soft story retrofit last year. it really benefited the building. it was almost no impact on the tenants whatsoever. they have the inconvenience of not using some of the parking spaces during

the construction. there was a restaurant. we did our work in the nighttime in the restaurant. everyone seemed to have benefited. the cost was less than i would have thought. i hope this goes through. >> thank you very much. >> yes, good afternoon, my name is george pagd i'm with the neighborhood. several things, we are concerned about as many people have said before, the pass through to the tenants. this is one way of evicting low cost tenants, to raise rent. so major concern. and another issue is property tax abatement. with the increase with the cost of the retrofit concern that some of the taxers will be increased sufficiently enough to have a major impact

on the rents, another thing is that there are other types of property and many other residents that are at far risk than these 10,000 soft story buildings. and that is another major concern. and i think that it should be great emphasis placed on low cost retrofit that mr. vich and that could be investigated and perhaps that could be a basis for the retrofit. lastly i want to thank supervisor kim, our hero for the amendments. >> are there any other members of the public who wish to

speak? c'mon up. >> good afternoon supervisors. my name is -- i'm 53 years of age. the last 21 years i have lived in state of california as well as 17 years in england where i grew up and the first 15 years of my life, iran. i have seen the effects of devastation of earthquakes on all these continents and with clear confidence i can state that if there is a near source earthquake triggered by either san andreas fault or heyward fault, the soft story buildings in the bay area including city of san francisco will receive

tremendous amount of failure, if not collapse resulting to the loss life and livelihood of the occupants. as a practicing engineer and the owner of a retrofit company who has provided nearly 50 seismic retrofit apartments in east bay including alameda, berkeley and oakland, my experience has been that none of their retro fitted buildings that we have had the experience of completing have resulted to any of displacements of the existing tenants. therefore if there is a retrofit property, the tenants will not be displaced.

>> thank you very much. are there any other members who would like to comment today. seeing none, public comment is closed. >> president chu. >> thank you mr. chair. i would like to thank everyone that came in support and others that raised some issues that we do need to think about and i would like to that can the folks involved in the caps study. i do have a question around tenant pass throughs and can you address the perspective of the working group and i'm hoping there might be someone from the rent standpoint. >> absolutely. i think it's important that you heard today that if you look through the ordinance language. not once does it mention pass through. these are laws which are currently on the books and we

believe the process works in our significant meetings we've had with tenant communities and with the ram port, we know there are hardship applications available for disabled and senior citizens and people who can not afford a resident increase in this nature. i know they are one of five organizations that receive funding from san francisco to help people with this process. with a we would like to do and i would like to give credit to supervisors breed for the amendment in the ordinance that there is now amendment for community outreach. this is a broad base piece of legislation which is in a 30 year plan, but to put it in this ordinance is something we need to do with significant outreach to the community, to the existing city departments that are going to be plan checking this, but to really make sure that if

someone can't afford to pay for this, there are avenues that someone can take and i'm happy to have you come up to discuss the detail hardship of this process. >> i think it would be helpful. >> thank you. i'm available for any other questions. >> supervisor executive director of the rent board. i don't want to insult your intelligence but i'm going to assume you know nothing about our process. seismic work required bylaw that this category falls into is passed and amortized over 20 years. another capital i am improvements depends on the size of the building depending on the amount of pass through. for buildings that are 5 or

fewer units there is a hundred percent pass through but phased over 20 years and tenants get a 5 percent rent increase every year. it's phased in at 5 percent through year. >> 5 percent of pass through amount, not rent each year. >> it's 5 percent of the rent until you exhaust the pass through. you can't have more increase on top of your annual rent increase. for buildings 6 and up then you have the 5050 pass through but amortization is fewer. i realize the community might differ about the the results of our hardship. for people who are poor t hardship provision work, for people who are moderate income, middle income, it is

not a slam dung that you are going qualify for hardship. we used to be that you will not pay more than 35 percent. more people pay that towards rent. for someone on ssi or unemployed, there is no problem. they will qualify. for persons who are disabled. the person in that situation is unlikely to change. for someone who is unemployed, we give them 6 months to get a job. we give them a year and if you still don't have employment in a year, come back and show us that you need additional time. i think the problem is that there are certain provisions that a company are hardship procedures and that's where it doesn't tend to be automatic.

for example if someone has a 3 bedroom apartment and they had their family grow up there but now their kids are all gone away to college and they are living there by themselves they might be required to get a roommate. if they are disabled and that would be a burden to them, that would be taken into account. likewise if someone is a student and their incumbent reaches the ratio of 35 percent, they might be required to at least work part-time. if you are a trust fund baby but paying 35 percent of your nuk # for rent, you are not going to qualify. there are procedures that make 35 percent the beginning of the inquiry but not a slam dunk. as i said, people who are going to be displaced by a resident increase would certainly kwa you have for a hardship

extension under our current procedures absent from the board. >> do you have data from applications that come in and result in different manners. >> i can get you statistics but anecdotally we get about 15 a month. when we have more petition, we have more hardships. other than i would say 95 percent of hardships application are granted. >> thank you. >> i just had a couple of questions about the process and procedure as well. how long does it take so once you submit what is the lensdz length of time? >> if a tenant filed a hard ship application they can file

at any time. for example if you are able body now you can pay for a pass through but if you have a -- if your financial circumstances change, it's hardship and that is not the case for other types of passers. but once the tenant files, it pachltsz passes. they are not displaced. it stays the pass through and the board looks to make sure the figures meet the 35 percent ratio, they kick it back to one of my administrative law judges who holds a hearing. the whole process probably takes 2-3 months but in the meantime while that process is going forward, the pass through is stayed and the tenant is not obld obligated to pay. >> it takes 2-3 months to pass

this? >> more or less. we have an incentive to expedited this. it would be after a lot of postponement because they are ill or something like that. usually what i do is try and call the other side. call the landlord and say could you please extend this pass through and usually they are cooperative. >> how long would you know this -- how well-known do you think this application is amongst renters? >> we think it's quite well-known because anytime we send a decision that contains a pass through. we send out a memorandum you mean in three languages that refer tenants to organizations to do actual outreach around hardship applications. i will admit,

it's not pleasant. tenants, there is no privacy involved. once you say i cannot afford to pay a pass through that the landlord is required to. you have to prove that it you have to show me your expenses and it's invasive. >> when you say trilingual i'm assuming cantonese and spanish. are they also offered into other languages? >> we can get translators for any language. >> you said that certain categories, it might be automatic? so disability, senior citizens perhaps? >> if you are on social security, ssi disability, you still have to go through process. you have to file a petition, application for hardship t board has to send it for a hearing. if you are on ssi, that hearing is going